Idea discussion for the balancing act of Stats/Level/EQ/Endgame

[AngstPunk]

Hello everyone!

I've played, coded and built many MUDS over the years, and have loved every minute of it. Over that time, I've remembered the things I liked best from every game. I like the coding style of what has been created with Go MUD, and hope to bring some ideas to the table that I think I'll work on, and that others may enjoy as well. Please give me feedback, good and bad, so I know I'm not wasting my time posting on ideas that no one else wants to hear. The design process is a process after all. In the end, I'm doing some coding as a pleasurable hobby, and perhaps giving some ideas or contributions to the community as well.

So, my first idea is a big one, and involves many different functions of the game. Stats, skills, spells, experience, combat and objects. The idea is to make progression through the game more enjoyable while also end goal oriented. Anyway, here you go:

• Max stats get capped at 100. Anything over that is waste but can be shown as 100(4) or similar, so players know where they have room to spare.
• Make max player level 100. Logarithmic scale for EXP to level, slowing progress as you approach 'end game'.
• Combat rounds not per turn, but speed based. One extra swing per main stat weapon +type (see more later).

-Random roll for stats at character creation.

• Only one race at start. Human.

• Only 2 stats can reach 100 and 1 additional to 90.

• Player can pick stats of order of importance at creation (str, perc, speed, etc.)

• Stats in order define random range for stats 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - Lets the player define their char type.
  - Stat 1 range: 15-20

  • Stat 2 range: 12-19
  • Stat 3 range: 8-18
  • Stat 4 range: 5-17
  • Stat 4 range: 5-15
  • Stat 5 range: 5-13
  • Stat 6 range: 5-11
  • Max stat total at creation can never reach more than 113 or less than 55.

• This will keep players from being a Barbarian-Mage or a Cleric-Thief from the start, building more game balance.

• Don't reveal stats to player until a defined level. Maybe 1 at a time between levels 10-15? Before that, make them see "???" in score.

  • This keeps re-rolled chars to a minimum, and want to involve themselves to req. level.

-Skill/Spells/Items can be based on char level and current stats.
- This makes it a goal to get a certain level to open a skill and also requires a certain stat level.
- Example: 'Sniper' skill requires 50 speed, 90 perc, level 50, position prone and a shoot weapon type.
- Example: 'Heal' requires 20 Mysti and 'Heal Group' requires 50.
- Example: To wield a particular 2 handed bash weapon requires 40 Vitality and 40 Strength.
- Weapons get a "swing" bonus. +1 swing per +10 Main stat over 50. (Swing 3 times hitting twice depending
on perc or speed or secondary stat)
- Perhaps weapons have a 'quality'; a cheap weapon can max one round attack at 2 swings, but a perfect weapon can attack max times based on player stats capped at a number of swings. i.e.> base is quality=1, ensures 1 attack per round, a quality of a high level item might cap at 10 attacks, based on player stats.

  - Allows a "remort" process at level 100.
  - At remort players get 5 points to spend on upping their 'max' on any stat, basically allowing them to get 100 in 3 stats. Or switch towards another build type.
  - Although players have to restart at their base stats, they will need to adjust eq. etc. to reach their goal and won't be able to wear all the old equipment they had until they meet the stat and level requirements for it.
  - Perhaps players can choose a new race at this point, allowing in-game to have race based armor/weapons/skills. i.e.>Elvish blade or Gnome helm.
  
  Anyway, I'm just putting this idea on paper for now. Please ask questions and let me know your thoughts!
  
  Happy gaming!
  --Angst.

[Volte6]

I've played, coded and built many MUDS over the years, and have loved every minute of it. Over that time, I've remembered the things I liked best from every game.

Love this. A big part of my inspiration in creating GoMud was seeing so many great systems and visual designs and wishing I could bring all the stuff I loved most together.

So, my first idea is a big one, and involves many different functions of the game. Stats, skills, spells, experience, combat and objects. The idea is to make progression through the game more enjoyable while also end goal oriented. Anyway, here you go:

• Max stats get capped at 100. Anything over that is waste but can be shown as 100(4) or similar, so players know where they have room to spare.
• Make max player level 100. Logarithmic scale for EXP to level, slowing progress as you approach 'end game'.
• Combat rounds not per turn, but speed based. One extra swing per main stat weapon +type (see more later).

I think we do a lot of this in some capacity, or something similar.

We use a logarithmic leveling scheme, of sorts.

Stats over 100 (actually, 105 I believe for me being lame at math reasons) get applied logarithmically, so although you can continue to gain, it's very, very low gains beyond. The idea being that you are encouraged to switch to an alt character at a point, but you could also devote a lot o ftime to levelling up a char for that extra 1% or 2% benefit.

As for combat rounds - I have been thinking about something similar. We could definitely have a speed cost to a given weapon, and a "combat energy accumulator". Then obviously each round we just deduct/apply an attack as many times as the combat energy permits. I do tend to like this because you get those occasional extra hits in combat when the accumulator overflows.

The downside is a weapons rework - Currently weapons are defined in a "D&D" style convention: 2d10+1, 3@1d2

This would need to be changed.. not huge, but we need to be sure of the benefits we are getting, and whether it's a desireable change overall.

We could also make it a configurable option, and the combat/damage definition can remain, but just have the option of looking at another stat for speed/accumulator based combat.

-Random roll for stats at character creation.

• Only one race at start. Human.

• Only 2 stats can reach 100 and 1 additional to 90.

• Player can pick stats of order of importance at creation (str, perc, speed, etc.)

• Stats in order define random range for stats 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - Lets the player define their char type.

  • Stat 1 range: 15-20
  • Stat 2 range: 12-19
  • Stat 3 range: 8-18
  • Stat 4 range: 5-17
  • Stat 4 range: 5-15
  • Stat 5 range: 5-13
  • Stat 6 range: 5-11
  • Max stat total at creation can never reach more than 113 or less than 55.

• This will keep players from being a Barbarian-Mage or a Cleric-Thief from the start, building more game balance.

• Don't reveal stats to player until a defined level. Maybe 1 at a time between levels 10-15? Before that, make them see "???" in score.

  • This keeps re-rolled chars to a minimum, and want to involve themselves to req. level.

There's nothing preventing a single race being defined with specific or no stat gains by default. This varies a little bit from being able to specify where your automatic stat gains will be, but players receive points to spend every level on stats as they please.

Note: Multi-classing etc. is inferred in GoMud - It's based on training in a particular set of skills. let me know if you'd like more explanation of this.

-Skill/Spells/Items can be based on char level and current stats.

• This makes it a goal to get a certain level to open a skill and also requires a certain stat level.
• Example: 'Sniper' skill requires 50 speed, 90 perc, level 50, position prone and a shoot weapon type.
• Example: 'Heal' requires 20 Mysti and 'Heal Group' requires 50.
• Example: To wield a particular 2 handed bash weapon requires 40 Vitality and 40 Strength.
• Weapons get a "swing" bonus. +1 swing per +10 Main stat over 50. (Swing 3 times hitting twice depending
  on perc or speed or secondary stat)

Automatic skill/spell gains on a per level basis is not currenty supported - you gain stats by training, or by any number of scripted events (finding/reading an ancient scroll, etc.).

I do understand the desire/need to support level based skill unlocks, though, and think it is something we should work towards supporting.

[AngstPunk]

So, I've been putting some of my ideas into testing when I have the time. I added the ability to change combat into a 'brief' combat display which works well. I have yet to add a 'set combat brief/verbose' yet, but it does clean up the screen a lot, especially in a party environment. So far I have only hardcoded it into combat.go, but it might be a nice offering if I modularize it. The output looks like this.

It's just a start, and I need to feed it back to the combat messaging, but it's an option that shortens screen spam, and looks much better to me.

Anyway, it works for me, just a thought and possibly a future option to share.

--Angst.